General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 20-fold increase in standardized testing coming with Gates Foundation's "Common Core": [View all]maggiesfarmer
(297 posts)Yes, I've stated a number of times that I agree there's a correlation between parental income and student performance. I don't think addressing the parental income gap is within the scope of K-12 education (I believe it is an outcome, however).
Now, since we both agree on that, let's consider the GF research that shows, when controlling for variables like income gap, the teacher has greater impact than other variables that most would agree do come under the scope of public education (text books, class size, etc..). you seem to have enough understanding of statistical methods to understand that those variables can be controlled for, especially across a large population group.
Setting aside the issue of testing being public/private (by all means make it public if that's a barrier).
Setting aside the issue that nobody advocates testing be the sole means of teacher evaluation.
Setting aside the issue that tests aren't perfect, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I believe that we can make progress on developing tests whose results correlate tightly to students learning skills that translate to jobs; there have to be dozens of education students doing PhD research every year on this topic).
What's the objection to performing annual standardized tests so we can start gathering quantitative data?
It may be that today's teachers are the best and brightest, if so, then let's pay them as such. but let's also raise the barrier to entry of the teaching profession.
what do you propose are the most effective means of evaluating teacher effectiveness? From my admittedly inexpert survey of the field, it seems that most subjective methods depend on evaluating teacher methods. However, there is a lot of info that effective teachers employ a great variety of methods with near equal effectiveness so those means of evaluation seem flawed at the outset. I certainly would expect peer, supervisor and student review to be a part of teacher evaluation, but what else?